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After 18 months of travel, we were going home. Not right at that moment, not the next day or the day after that, but not too far away either.
Fast forward two months, and not too far away has arrived. We're going home...this week.
The airline reminder email has popped up. Our bank account has almost (almost!) depleted. We've run out of shampoo and toothpaste.
It's time.
We've been on a bit of an adventure. The best kind of adventure. The one that pushes you, amazes you, breaks you down, picks you up. The one that takes you to the sea, the mountains, the rivers, the cities, the villages, and the big, scary unknowns. The adventure that leaves you with an almost exhausted 'landscape hangover' because you've been so blessed, so lucky, to have seen so many different things.
And that's what brings me here.
While reflecting about coming home I began to realise I'm also losing one. This adventure, this travel, this life has been our home. We've been living it for 18 months, and planning it for 18 months before that.
Three years.
For a year and a half our comfort zone has been airports and bus stations. Friends you made in an instant became family that you shared birthdays with, Christmas with, New Years Eve, beers, and crazy Bolivian discos.
'Home' is a small village completely surrounded by the greenest of green fields in Nepal, a teeny tiny studio apartment in Paris, or a sand-filled hut perched perfectly on the chilled out Colombian coastline. A chair in Stansted airport. An overnight bus.
Food I wasn't quite sure of has become as regular as mum's home cooking, a cow on the sidewalk is now a normality (oh, India), and broken English has become my first language.
And now, coming 'home' - home, home - is a little intimidating. I'm saying farewell to all I've begun to know. I need a job. I'm genuinely concerned about the price of a taxi. Am I going to be able to afford a beer? 18 months ago I didn't even like beer.
I've read a lot of blogs that talk about the post-travel blues. That talk about how tough it might be going back. And, I have no doubt it will - I have to say goodbye to the travel life for a while. To my now normality, my now everyday reality.
But I've realised it's just silly to get sad about this. Isn't it all part of the adventure?
Instead of getting bummed down about where you aren't, start writing the next chapter about where you are.
Driving a car for the first time in 18 months will be an adventure (for me and everyone else on the road).
If this trip and all the hilarious, crazy, eccentric, generous, and above all, welcoming humans we've met have taught me anything - any form of 'wisdomous truth' - it's that 'home' doesn't have to be fixed. It changes as life changes.
Travel has been a mighty beautiful home for the past 18 months, and we've met some mighty beautiful people. But now, it is on to the next adventure.
And so, here it is. From one traveller to another. My final reflection after 18 months worth of spare time for reflections. Home is where the sun rises and falls; where the stars come out and the moon shines bright. Where the sea fills with swimmers or the streets fill with snow. Where there is a bed, a mattress, a chair, a beach towel, or a sleeping bag. 'Home', just like travel, moves with you.